Time Trends in Pulmonary Embolism Mortality Rates in the United States, 1999 to 2018

Background Although historical trends before 1998 demonstrated improvements in mortality caused by pulmonary embolism (PE), contemporary estimates of mortality trends are unknown. Therefore, our objective is to describe trends in death rates caused by PE in the United States, overall and by sex-race, regional, and age subgroups. Methods and Results We used nationwide death certificate data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research to calculate age-adjusted mortality rates for PE as underlying cause of death from 1999 to 2018. We used the Joinpoint regression program to examine statistical trends and average annual percent change. Trends in PE mortality rates reversed after an inflection point in 2008, with an average annual percent change before 2008 of -4.4% (-5.7, -3.0,